Reproduction devices like DVD- or Blu-ray-players provide a user interface for navigation in the video information that is available for reproduction. These user interfaces are widely known from DVD navigation menus that typically comprise a chapter menu for selecting a certain chapter or video sequence of the DVD. Often, these chapter menus provide a more or less significant thumbnail for each scene or chapter. This may be a key frame, e.g. the first frame of a chapter or a short video sequence. The user may select the corresponding chapter of the DVD by navigating and selecting, e.g. clicking, the thumbnail. Subsequently, the reproduction device, e.g. the DVD-player, may cause a display device to reproduce the video content of the respective chapter.
FIG. 1 is a simplified screenshot showing a typical DVD chapter menu according to the prior art. A menu button 2 allows the user to jump back to the DVD main menu, a forward button 4 and a backwards button 6 will allow the user to switch the menu items 81 . . . 84 forwards and backwards. Each menu item 81 . . . 84 represents a chapter of the DVD. The letters A to D schematically represent the image content of the thumbnail. Further, each menu item 81 . . . 84 comprises a chapter number ranging from 1 to 4 that is indicating the chronology of the chapters.
However, the information of the chapter menu may be not sufficient for a user who desires a personal and fast navigation. For instance, a user may want to navigate via the chapter menu to a certain time reference of the video. Perhaps he or she has already watched the beginning of a movie but has been obliged to stop it. Now, the user gets back to this movie later on and wants to resume the movie without re-watching it right from the beginning. Another scenario is a user who directly wants to access a specific scene of a movie. This may be a scene that he or she watched some time ago. However, the user does not exactly remember the place or time of the desired scene. Another user may want to select a certain song in a concert video or a certain well-known scene of a movie. Typically, the user has to search the movie in fast forward mode which may be an unpleasant experience.